Sunday, September 26, 2010

LA Little Tokyo Food Tour

Many people think that the beach (and fantastic weather) are really the only reasons to visit LA. They are wrong. The real beauty of LA comes from having the best and most authentic food from all over the world right here in one place. I have never been to any other city in the world that has LA's diversity and authenticity of world cuisine.

While I do a lot of food exploring here on my own, I figured I should continue my food-tour tradition with a local favorite, Little Tokyo. A couple of friends and I signed up for the Six Taste Little Tokyo Food Tour (http://www.sixtaste.com/little_tokyo), and had a fantastic time. I'm not going to write about each thing we had, since when I tried to do that for the Seattle Pike's Place tour, I never got around to posting all the pictures. The summary is that we had a lot of fun, ate some great food, and discovered a bunch of new places that I plan to come back and investigate further. On a side note, this food tour had a lot larger portions (at least for the first 3 or 4 stops) than any of the other tours I have been on, so definitely don't eat before you go.

fruit tea with cherry, strawberry, hibiscus and maybe some other stuff?

learning about the different types of tea and their manufacturing process

Orange + something black tea, reminded me of the MarketSpice tea from the Seattle Tour except without the cinnamon. They also have a "transition tea" for coffee drinkers looking to switch to tea that is dark and about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. It has even sort of has a rich coffee flavor to it, didn't get a picture, sorry!

fresh made marmalade and excellent fresh made cream on scones

The Japanese love their food challenges lol. This is a BIG bowl of lots of rice and sashimi + soup on the side lol I don't think I could do it in 15 minutes...

mmm toro, also very fresh udon and good wasabi!

Didn't go inside here, just learned about it.

Remember this is a "Little Tokyo" tour not a "japanese food tour"... This middle-eastern fusionish bar added some fun variety.

I love sweet potato fries, and theirs were executed very well, but it was actually the regular fries that really surprised me, a great blend of crunch, crispy, and yummy!